Help with “best and final offers” please

[Turnips857]

Absolutely fallen in love with a house. It’s on the market for offers over £550k but it has been priced quite low because they want a quick sale as elderly gentleman owner is going into a residential home and no chain.

We are in a short chain, our house is under offer and our buyers are living with family so want to move asap. Both our mortgages are in place and solicitors instructed.

We have already made an offer of £560,000 and waiting to hear back. However there were about 15 viewings at the open house and the estate agent has said he expects it to go “significantly over” the listed price. Part of me thinks this is just him talking it up to try to get more commission but also I think he is probably right, it’s on a very desirable road and is competitively priced. It needs some updating and could be extended with planning.

I’m already devastated at the thought of not getting it 😭 so wanted to ask for any tips or hints for how to proceed. We already included our reasons for wanting the house in our initial offer (close to children's schools, near family). Our initial budget was £575-585k but we have approval to borrow up to £605k. How the hell do you decide on the final offer to put forward?! How do I not melt into a nervous wreck?! Anything else I can do to give us a better chance? Advice gratefully received!

Should also add though that £605k is our max really and we do need to spend some money on the house in the short term on lots of little bits and bobs as it’s a bit old and knackered although serviceable. Main concerns are some plastering needs redoing in kids rooms before we can paint in there and the gardens and sheds need clearing as they’ve gone to rack and ruin so not safe for the DCs to play.

Have you been asked for best and final yet? EA’s often talk up interest but you only need to think about best and final when other people are offering.

If you are in that situation, you just have to be clear about your no regrets price. Will you regret offering higher if you don’t get it? Or will you constantly we annoyed at the thought that you overpaid?

No we haven’t been asked yet but it seems inevitable because house prices around here are very strongly dictated by specific roads/locations within the town. For example if this house was just a few roads away it would be £100k less. It is on one of the most sought after roads in the area and nothing this cheap ever comes on the market. So obviously we won’t go in all guns blazing immediately but I do expect it to go to sealed bids.

I think the reason we are struggling is that we feel like it wouldn’t be sensible to go all the way up to £605k because we should really keep some money back to do work to the house. However if we absolutely needed to we could save money by doing more of it ourselves (eg. Ideally we’d get landscapers to come and clear the garden as it’s a complete overgrown mess but in theory there’s no reason we couldn’t clear it ourselves if we spent a couple of weekends on it). It’s also hard to know what the true value of the place is, Zoopla estimate is £675k but that’s assuming it is all modernised.

Fingers x that you get your house and it doesn’t go to best and final offers. However if it does maybe work out what the house is worth to you.

If you offered less than 605 and you found out later that someone else got it for that price would you be (a) gutted, or (b) pleased that you hadn’t pushed yourself and stretched yourself financially?

If you’d be gutted offer your max budget. Don’t get into a trap of trying to offer lower to buy stuff for a house you’ve not got yet- it’s pointless. If you love the house, better to secure it first and live with a few rough edges.

If someone else paid £605k then I probably would be gutted but I’d also feel a bit anxious paying that much ourselves as it would use up almost every last penny and I’d be flogging things on Vinted to pay towards the new carpets etc. Having said that if the SHTF and we needed a new boiler or the roof caved in (don’t worry we will be getting a full survey if we get it!) then we do have the option of a credit card to tide us over as we don’t currently have any CC debt and/or I have a family member who would happily lend us money.

We have just agreed a sale on a house for 630 which is our top end of budget. Our best and final offer was 625k and they asked for 5k more 😖 but we absolutely LOVE this house, is it our dream forever home.
we originally started offer at 600 and they negotiated us up. You are in a strong position with the first part of the chain already pretty sorted! Things will be tight here and there but we will make it work.
but yes you need to decide how much you love this house and what your top budget is to live comfortable so you know what is doable.

good luck!!!

I think that’s probably your answer then. You could try quizzing the estate agent about who else is going to offer but you might not get an entirely honest answer….

The other thing is that you are not obliged to pay the price you offer now- nothing is binding until you exchange contracts. So if you did find something horrible on the survey or even changed your mind you can legally walk away. Obviously don’t offer a price you know you’re never going to pay but, honestly, a competitively priced house with 15 viewings is not a time to hold money back for a new carpet (shampoo the old one or take it up and live with bare floorboards and a rug!).

Thank you this is very good advice, I hadn’t thought of it that way. We had been holding back a bit because the elderly owner has been there nearly 50 years and it’s obvious from the state of the place that there are a few issues that will require some money spending and until we have the survey we can’t possibly know the full extent of it. For example all the floorboards upstairs are extremely creaky, I’ve never been in a house with such loud floorboards, so it’s possible that they’re all rotten or something but I guess the survey should (hopefully) flag that up. If so then we could always reduce our offer back down in light of any significant work needed.

Hi, I didn't read all the responses but this is what I think -
You already got it in your head that you will go to £605k. Psychology you have resigned yourself to this number and financially it will work. Tough - but doable. In other words, you know that under the right circumstances it's a possibility and a risk you are willing to take. Now, you found your dream home and you said you'll be devastated to lose it so to me that sounds like 'the right circumstances'.
Put the highest offer you can at this stage which you know with certainty to bit the competition, but stopping just a bit short from your maximum budget (unless the competition is very close to £605, in which I will go in with the full amount). This is the only way to maximise your chances getting the house and minimise the pain if you didn't. If someone else gets it for £606 or more, you know you did your best and you can sleep well at night (and that this is how it meant to be). Good luck!

Squeaky floorboards just means they need screwing down a bit more firmly. Bouncy floorboards is a sign there is some rot going on.

I sold to best and final. I did not go with the highest bid. I went with the highest PROCEEDABLE bid. So emphasise that you are already under offer and good to go.
My gut tells me closer to £575 by the way. What has the most recent house on the street sold for?

@Turnips857 I personally wouldn't overstretch myself so I'd max out at £585,000 because I wouldn't be happy only having credit cards as an emergency fund.

Also, even though 15 viewed at the open house only a few of them are likely to be proceedable to make an offer. You are one of those people so you're already in a good position. Plus, a lot of people look at houses close to the top of their budget so they may not be able to pay much over the asking price. I wouldn't assume that everyone else has another £50k to add to their offer.

I wouldn't bother asking the estate agent much - s/he works for the vendor and has a vested interest in getting the maximum amount for the sale.
We lost a house on sealed bids because someone bid significantly higher than the asking price as they had been in the position of losing out on a number of houses in this situation and just wanted to make sure they got it ...
We got a house - and were not the highest bidder - because we could move quickly - so as someone else said it would be worth while making that clear to the estate agent. A sale that was not going to fall through might be worth more than a higher bid ...
I wouldn't want to push myself to the brink financially / to a point where I was not comfortable and could not see a way of sorting things if there were unforeseen problems.
Also in an old (?) house with someone who has been in it for 50 years I would be assuming it would be a case of starting a job and finding it opens a can of worms.

This is reassuring and I had read that spongy = very bad and they didn’t feel spongy. Just the loudest and creakiest house I’ve ever walked in 😂

Yes we could move really quickly and I have emphasised this in our offer.
I’m switching between thinking that we should just do whatever we can to get the house and then work out any issues afterwards, and thinking no we should be sensible there are likely to be some issues so we need to keep money to one side. It’s really tough!

Quick update for anyone interested, it did go to best and final offers (there weee 3 parties bidding including us) and we won! Thanks for the advice. We bid £581k in the end as we wanted to make sure we had at least a bit of money leftover.

Huge congrats. Your nerves must be shot!

@Turnips857 Really pleased for you!

@Mum5net @ingkir thanks both, yes I am a nervous wreck now! Having a celebratory drink tonight to calm myself!

Well done! So exciting for you.

Thanks for updating us.